Saturday, July 12, 2008

CBR Brubaker Interview, Details on "Bad Night."

In promoting the publication of "The Dead and The Dying", Ed Brubaker conducted an interview with Comic Book Resources, published here on Wednesday. In the interview, Ed reveals the original plan for showing how Gnarly ended up at the Undertow, and he confirms that the parallels between Teeg and Tracy Lawless was intentional.

The interview focuses on the upcoming arc, "Bad Night." I misread the original solicitation and thought the story would be set a few years before "Lawless." Instead, it's set about a year after. In addition to putting the spotlight on Jacob, the story introduces the staff of an all-night diner -- the Blue Fly Diner, apparently -- and the story has elements that would fit in stories by David Goodis or by Jim Thompson. The issue's bonus material will feature an interview with Charles Ardai, editor of Hard Case Crime, the excellent imprint that focuses on old-school paperback noir, and this CBR interview includes six black-and-white preview pages of Criminal #4.

To follow "Bad Night," Ed already has other stories in the planning stages, and he suggests that, if Criminal ever draws to a close, the final and longest story arc may be the untold story that was alluded to in "Coward" and that casts a shadow on all who survived: what Ed simply alludes to as, "Leo’s screw up."

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Bullets: An Auction, an Interview, and Upcoming Releases.

A quick update on the world of Criminal.

Brubaker's Cap Auction. First, a worthy cause not directly related to Criminal: Ed Brubaker recently announced that he is auctioning off his writing notebook for the first two-plus years of his run on Captain America, as part of the Hero Initiative's efforts to raise funds to help famed artist Gene Colan, who is now suffering from liver failure. Ed was interviewed about this auction by Newsarama, here. The eBay auction can be found here, and the auction closes late this Sunday evening, July 13th.

Podcast Interview, Brubaker and Fraction. Also at Newsarama, the second part of John Siuntres' "Word Balloon" interview with Ed and Matt Fraction was published last week, here. The three spend a great deal of time discussing movies, mentioning The Yakuza, which was the subject of last issue's essay, and Criminal itself is discussed in-depth for about eight minutes, starting from about the 4-minute mark. Ed discusses the difficulty of writing the last three interlocking single-issue stories, revealing that "Female of the Species" was originally plotted to be occur concurrently with the earlier two stories rather than serve as a prelude to Danica's return to the city.

Ed also discusses the upcoming arc, "Bad Night," which he describes as a new kind of story for the series, where nothing is as it seems, and the story is tempered with black humor. The story features the "Frank Kafka" writer Jake who, unlike Leo, really is a true physical coward. Jake suffers from some mental health issues, including serious insomnia, and Ed revealed that -- assuming Jake survives this story (which seems likely since it's apparently set in the past) -- Jake will be featured in another story called "Vanishing Point." For those keeping up, that means that, beyond "Bad Night," there are at least three more arcs already in the works, one each for Leo, Tracy, and Jake.

July Releases. It's a big month for Criminal. The third trade paperback is out this Wednesday, July 9th. It's priced slightly lower than the previous volumes, it features an John Singleton, and -- as Sean announced earlier this month, and as we see at Ed's blog -- it features different cover art than what was solicited.

On July 23rd, we should see the first chapter of "Bad Night," in Criminal #4. And, as we covered in May, Liberty Comics, which features a Criminal story, is scheduled to be released the same day.

UPDATE: Almost immediately after I posted this entry, Marvel updated its page for Criminal #4 to reflect an August release.

The big month for Criminal could end with a bang, as the Eisner Awards are announced Friday, July 25th, at San Diego's Comic-Con International. As we covered earlier, Ed's nominated for Best Writer, in part for his work on Criminal.